You know, I think TR would have been so much more successful had it been the kind of 4 player co-op game with a campaign. Sort of like Hellgate, or even Left 4 Dead in a way. Just make it a more focused experience with a lot of instanced content like Diablo/Guild Wars.

As an attempt at goodwill - or more likely retaining at least some of the departing Tabula Rasa player-base - they've offered a 'severance package' of sorts to the players. This package includes two months of City of Heroes/City of Villains and two free months of Aion among other things.

I think the point about Richard Garriott's name being used too much to hype the game makes sense. I couldn't tell you the real name (as opposed to forum nickname) of anyone involved with LOTRO, or WoW, or City of Heroes. You might recognize the names of people designated as spokespersons for those games but you don't see the games hyped as "John Doe's World of Warcraft" or "Jeffrey Steefel's Lord of the Rings Online." "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa" means nothing more to the average game buyer than "Joe Blow's Tabula Rasa."

To me another critical mistake -- and a bizarre decision by NCSoft given the lively official forums for most of its other MMOs -- was not setting up an official forum for TR. They tried to update people via the official site, and I guess some dev types tried to make appearances at fan site forums, but I really don't think you can pass up a chance to communicate directly with subscribers. I assume it was some cost-cutting move, but it made no sense to me - esp. after they stole CuppaJo (April Burba) away from the City of Heroes forums and then effectively seemed to give her little to do (but a fancy title). She woulda been ideal to run a forum for the game (albeit maybe she wanted to move on from doing that sort of thing).

Richard Garriott this and Richard Garriott that. Yeah, I think him putting his name in front of the title didn't help at all, as Ultima was only well known for all the older gamers who've played his games for years (or played Ultima Online, which had absolutely nothing to do with TR).

And yes, not having official forums is a TERRIBLE idea. Vanguard did it to start, and hey look, they're next to dead. Only reason they're still around IMHO is because Sony bought them up and put them into their Station Access pass thingy.

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While I'm not willing to give up on the idea of something sci-fi working in an avatar-type MMORPG (as opposed to Eve Online and the like), I just think the basic mmorpg combat mechanics are more acceptable to players in a fantasy-type environment than they are with guns, lasers, plasma cannons and what not.

I know lots of folks that played TR and quite enjoyed it but there wasn't enough there to warrant sticking around more than a month or 2. Like some others here, I thought LOTRO at launch didn't quite have enough zones for my tastes. In the last year or so they've added Evindem, Farochel, Tal Bruinen, and now Eregion and Moria, among other things. If TR could've added a fraction of that much in new areas, I think it would've helped people retain interest.

I'm not privy to their software tools. Maybe Turbine's world builder tools are easier/cheaper to work with, or maybe TR was never going to be able to add much content after launch.

I also think to some extent this "Holy Grail" of "let's build an mmorpg that draws in casual gamers" is bunk. I mean, you need gamers that are going to really dig into your game and remain loyal to it, and be willing to chuck $180 a year (roughly) at it. I don't know that most "casual gamers" are looking for that sort of "gaming relationship" or that sort of financial commitment to a game.

I give WoW credit for having tremendously broad appeal. I mean, I've known people who were hardcore FPS players who had no intention of ever trying an mmorpg fall hard for WoW. So I think WoW has done a fine job of appealing to a wide cross section of gamers, but I don't know that I'd say it roped in "casual" gamers -- and the latter seemed to be what TR desperately wanted to do.

I really need to stop navel gazing like this.

fwiw, I do think TR was cool in many ways (esp. the character models), and I wished the player base had been there enough for it to see major content updates and new zones. I don't think it was in any way as messed up or "split personality" as Hellgate: London was, and I had more fun with it than Auto Assault (even if it's meeting the same fate as those) or the rapidly fading Dungeon Runners.

Richard Garriott this and Richard Garriott that. Yeah, I think him putting his name in front of the title didn't help at all, as Ultima was only well known for all the older gamers who've played his games for years (or played Ultima Online, which had absolutely nothing to do with TR).

And yes, not having official forums is a TERRIBLE idea. Vanguard did it to start, and hey look, they're next to dead. Only reason they're still around IMHO is because Sony bought them up and put them into their Station Access pass thingy.

I do agree, Mythic seem to take this stance as well. As has been said it seems to good a chance to pass up - the ability to control the dialogue between fans and devs. Otherwise the masses control the dialogue.

I think it can work if there are enough rabid fans to get a fairly professionally run fan forum going. RelicNews, which is strictly volunteer fans, but is often mistaken as an Official company-run forum and site, is a good example although that's devoted to everything Relic - not just one game. I don't think TR by itself was going to inspire that sort of thing though. I tried a lot of fly-by-night forums for the game but never really found a good place for information.

Back in about 1999-2001 I ran an EZBoard forum for the Diablo-wannabe Darkstone. I eventually got it to the point where it became a "go to" place for information, and a couple members of Delphine's dev team posted here and there. It was exhausting to run though (I had a little help for my site's news page but I had to keep the board clean by myself).

I think maybe the game's best chance of success would've been doing it Guild Wars style (free-to-play; sell a lot of stand-alone expansions), but they never were able to add much in the way of meaty content (aside from one early update that added some cool instances).

Scott Brown: So basically what happens is the game doesnít meet expectations and people start trying to figure out how the game is going to make a profit. In the case of Auto Assault, NCsoft opted to just close the game versus running it with a smaller team. I donít have any insight into the situation, but it looks like they did the same sort of thing with Tabula Rasa.

On the other hand, with the original Jumpgate we just scaled our team back until it was profitable. I really donít understand why youíd ever shut off a game, in my opinion.

Ten Ton Hammer: Why would a company turn off a game rather than just scaling back the team?

Scott: I donít know the answer to that. I can tell you that it was certainly a disagreement between us and them.

I would never turn off a game. I would do what I would need to do to make the game support itself, but why turn it off? Especially when there are people that love your game?

Thereís a site Ė and I donít know how many people have seen it Ė itís called biomek.org, and itís an old Auto Assault site/forum. There are a bunch of people that go on there and post about how they liked Auto Assault and enjoyed playing it. There arenít a ton of people, but the point is that there is a community out there that enjoyed playing the game. I still get emails from people asking me to turn the game back on. And I wish I could, but itís not my IP.

I think communities form, but they donít necessarily have to be the size of the World of Warcraft to be a success. Really, I would never turn this stuff off.

I don't usually copy 'n' paste something that long. It's just, they're no longer working with NCSoft so he has sort of carte blanche to speak freely, which is sort of refreshing, juicy even. All you got when AA got unplugged was Corporate Speak.

If you never had a TR account, you need a credit card to set one up but they assure you won't be charged from here until the game's demise (end of February 2009). So, if you wanted to try it, now's your chance. About 2 months of free play's not a bad deal, and that's about how long most folks who tried it retained interest in the game anyway.

I know I don't play it anymore, but it really ticks me off that this game is going bye bye for good. Can't someone pick it up and keep it running on a shoestring budget? Isn't that what happened to Vanguard?

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I know I don't play it anymore, but it really ticks me off that this game is going bye bye for good. Can't someone pick it up and keep it running on a shoestring budget? Isn't that what happened to Vanguard?

Vanguard has a pretty large playerbase, between 10.000 and 20.000 confirmed by developers, and is part of the sony package. This game dont have the same advantages I'm afraid

I know I don't play it anymore, but it really ticks me off that this game is going bye bye for good. Can't someone pick it up and keep it running on a shoestring budget? Isn't that what happened to Vanguard?

Vanguard has a pretty large playerbase, between 10.000 and 20.000 confirmed by developers, and is part of the sony package. This game dont have the same advantages I'm afraid

I wouldn't exactly use 'large' as a word describing the playerbase here. That said - the reason Vanguard (and SWG and Matrix Online) stay around is because they're under the Sony '$30 or so to play them all' plan.

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I suspect a lot of the older MMO games have their servers on dynamic server farms that automatically dedicate more or less resources to it as needed, thus these older games can be run for dirt cheap considering they're just piggybacking on server farms used for everything else.

I think TR was a victim of many things. They started out with that weird hippie space war thing, then switched to a more Halo style space war, but never really took it a step farther.

I know I don't play it anymore, but it really ticks me off that this game is going bye bye for good. Can't someone pick it up and keep it running on a shoestring budget? Isn't that what happened to Vanguard?

Vanguard has a pretty large playerbase, between 10.000 and 20.000 confirmed by developers, and is part of the sony package. This game dont have the same advantages I'm afraid

I wouldn't exactly use 'large' as a word describing the playerbase here. That said - the reason Vanguard (and SWG and Matrix Online) stay around is because they're under the Sony '$30 or so to play them all' plan.

I agree - I meant comparatively to a game like Tabula Rasa, and, unfortunately Chronicles of SPellborn which probably have 500 subscribers all in all...

so, I fired up TR earlier today... wow, the place was deserted. every control point that I saw was under Bane control, and with no one else playing it's impossible to take them back. apparently there was a respec at some point too as all my skills and attributes were reset.

maybe since it's near the end they'll up the XP you get so people can see more of the game before it's gone. there is a new Earth zone, but while I can find the wormhole to it I cannot figure out how to activate it.

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I know I don't play it anymore, but it really ticks me off that this game is going bye bye for good. Can't someone pick it up and keep it running on a shoestring budget? Isn't that what happened to Vanguard?

If ya'll recall, Sigil Games was the developer of Vanguard and co-published it with SOE. I'm oversimplifying the history a bit, but basically Sigil was going to go out of business, and SOE stepped in to buy "key assets" and keep the game running, and invested enough in it to help markedly improve what was by most accounts a pretty broken game when it launched.

SOE takes all sorts of criticism, but I think they've been more patient and willing than about anyone else out there to keep MMOs with fairly modest playerbases alive and kicking (I don't think SW: Galaxies, The Matrix Online and Planetside are exactly mobbed with players these days but they're all still breathing). Of course some would argue they screwed up numerous games so that they never became massive successes, but I haven't played those enough to know myself.

TR is a different story - its dev is part of the NCSoft stable of studios already, and NCSoft itself as publisher has decided to pull the plug on the game. So there's no chance of NCSoft itself riding in as the cavalry since they've already given it a "no confidence" vote.

I don't think SOE would have any interest in it as the game is probably too similar to Planetside (albeit PS has no quests and is more an FPS Gone Large). And I can't really see any other publisher being interested in the game, even if NCSoft wanted to sell the assets cheap. It's probably telling that 2008 only saw 3 of what people would consider "major" MMO launches (AoC, Warhammer and Pirates of the Burning Sea). And only Warhammer among those would probably be considered thriving.

This is probably not a good time to try to sell a dying MMO. Companies are laying off people, closing studios, and unplugging games (MMO and otherwise).

And it's over. Spotted on kotaku that stores dumped their stocks of TR in the waste bins.

I keep thinking TR would have done a whole lot better with even more focus on the military aspect, make it even more action RPG. They could treat it more as a Diablo/Hellgate style game that's heavily co-op based.

I logged in last night for a bit and did some base defense at the Hydro Base on the Pegasus server. I didn't see a single soul I'm thinking they probably could take it down now and no one would notice, but I'm keeping it installed just to see if they do a big blow out bash at the end.

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And it's over. Spotted on kotaku that stores dumped their stocks of TR in the waste bins.

I keep thinking TR would have done a whole lot better with even more focus on the military aspect, make it even more action RPG. They could treat it more as a Diablo/Hellgate style game that's heavily co-op based.

I'd agree, except there are too many games like that you can play for free. You just can't expect people to pay $15 a month for something they'd probably have more fun with in something designed ground-up for action (Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike etc.). Planetside soldiers on, but I don't venture its servers are clogged with players either now.

That's another reason I think their decision not to set up an official forum was a mistake. For a lot of gamers, official forums are communcations lifelines - even when the communciation is the game's impending doom, it helps spread the word.

I figure I'll wait until TR's finale month (February) and then give it a return-whirl. I'm really just interested in trying out the new mech/PAU stuff, whether it lives up to the long-ago hype or not - though I'm not clear what the pre-requisites are to get those.

I think part of the reason the servers remain mostly empty is some misunderstanding about the game's status. I was bringing up the free-to-play status with some LOTRO kinmates and all they had heard was "the game had been canceled"; I think a lot of folks think the game's already been unplugged. Although I played the game for several months after launch, I don't think so far I've received any sort of NCSoft e-mail notice to return and enjoy the game free. Maybe they just need to get the word out better.

The funniest capper to all this is Garriott saying at some recent games panel discussion, that he wants to stay in gaming afterall. Oops. I bet NCSoft wasn't amused to hear that.

Although I played the game for several months after launch, I don't think so far I've received any sort of NCSoft e-mail notice to return and enjoy the game free. Maybe they just need to get the word out better.

As a former subscriber as well (as well as a current subscriber of another NCSoft game - City of Heroes), I know I haven't gotten any notice for it. And I do get NCSoft's e-mails from time to time about other things.

On a side note - anybody else find it funny that the title of this post never got past "Tabula Rasa beta"?

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It's sad (not to mention an awful use of landfill space), although from past experience with Auto Assault and Hellgate: London, a lot of stores will probably still have those boxes on their shelves months after the game "goes dark." A lot of places just aren't very diligent about clearing canceled/to-be-canceled games inventory.

The Collector's Edition manual was pretty awesome as far as manuals go today (I think I posted my photos of it in somewhere in the early pages of this thread). I'd probably sift through the garbage and try to save some of them. If the game were as good and deep as its collector's edition manual... it wouldn't have mattered.

In this Kotaku post, we see two reader-submitted photos of said dumpster, and it really makes me sad to think about where those games could have gone instead. I wonder if they first tried to give them away for free, or perhaps the EB Games upper management told them that it's not even worth the shelf space, considering their PC shelf space is shrinking every day anyway. Would you have taken a free copy of Tabula Rasa, just to play it out completely free these last six weeks?

Although I'm inclined to say I would've put the stack by the door with a flyer explaining, "Hey, enjoy this for free for 6 weeks," I would assume that's probably against store policy. But you'd think that might at least build some sort of good will with customers - rather than just filling up trash bins.

I posted before that Fry's in Alpharetta Ga had two collectors edition on the shelf tagged at 4.99; was there maybe a week ago and they were still there. Heck I though about buying one just for the coin and dog tags.

To me, the interesting point-to-ponder with doomed games like this and Auto Assault, is whether there's anything that would've made the games either hits, or enabled them to retain enough of a player-base for NCSoft to have continued running the server, or if they were both just doomed, period.

To me, TR wasn't horribly broken at launch. Well, the crafting was half-baked, but I don't know if broken was the word. I just don't know that 3-6 months in beta would've helped the game keep its launch player base. It didn't have an AoC-size player base at launch to begin with. I would've liked more to do later on, but that goes for just about any MMO.

With Auto Assault (which I played in beta, and later after its release), I kind of knew the game was doomed. The avatar-mode in "towns" was ugly and seemed like an afterthought. The add-on parts for vehicles seemed too subtle and not eye-catching enough. The idea of focusing quests around the fact that hey, "you've got a car!" (many fans complained about the lack of races, stunt driving etc.), never seemed to enter the Netdevil thought process - instead you'd drive around trying to squash 16 gooey bugs, over and over again.

With the still soldiering-on AoC, I could see that if they could've afforded to spend 6-9-12 months bug fixing, polishing crafting, building up the PvP to live up to the hype, building up mid and high level content, etc., etc., the game could've been amazing at launch and maybe would've retained its massive launch player- base (which seemed to even make Blizzard sit up and take notice, though probably no longer than a *blink*), instead of now having to scratch and claw to build back up its reputation.

Going back to TR, I just vaguely remember its earlier incarnation as some bizarre Samurai-anime style mix of medeival and Sci-Fi. Garriott, if I recall, insisted they gut that version and came up with the TR we know. Who's to say now whether they would've been better off with the bizarre Samurai-anime incarnation, or just canceling the project and trying something different.

TenTonHammer pointed out a Jan. 23 announcement that the remaining 4 Tabula Rasa servers will get merged into one. Alt-itis players will probably lost some inventory and extra characters unless they pare down a bit. I guess the goal is to at least get the few remaining players together, which makes sense.

All 4 servers have a different database where all your character progress and data is stored. We will be merging those databases, allowing you to play on one single server with other Tabula Rasa players from around the world.

They don't have much time left (Feb. 28 is the game's last day), so I guess they must be doing this soonTM.

I haven't really felt an itch to return, as it turned out. I like the feeling of progress in MMOs (probably why I don't tend to stick with a character once it reaches the level cap, even if there's end level content to do), so putting in a few weeks on a dying game didn't end up appealing much to me.

But I might try to play some in late Feburary. It might be interesting to be there on the day they pull the plug. I remember seeing some interesting screenshots from Asheron Call 2's and Auto Assault's last days.

Personally, I don't think the MMO market wants or rewards innovation, "fresh" environments or much new. For the most part, what's succeeding are the best-polished "comfort food" MMOs. Probably the worse the world economy gets, the more publishers will want to stay in the established "lanes" and not take a chance on spending a lot of development money on something trying to break the mould. Which isn't to say TR was an ideal "mould breaker." In the end, maybe it was just moldy.

I did stumble onto some drawings the other day of those infuriating (but to some extent fun) symbol puzzles in TR. I'll actually kind of miss that "Captain Crunch decoder ring" sensation...

I was reading about an upcoming actiony, Unreal 3-engined MMO called Global Agenda, and thought, "Wow, this is like a snazzier Tabula Rasa!" But, it appears to be strictly PvP, and it's more like perhaps Planetside (which survives but doesn't exactly seem overwhelmed with subscribers today):

I was reading about an upcoming actiony, Unreal 3-engined MMO called Global Agenda, and thought, "Wow, this is like a snazzier Tabula Rasa!" But, it appears to be strictly PvP, and it's more like perhaps Planetside (which survives but doesn't exactly seem overwhelmed with subscribers today):

# Any class can drive any Mech but must have Logos to use abilities# Accessible only on Edmund and limited to use on Edmund# Entry to a Mech only occurs on Mech Pads# The hologram above the Mech pad matchs the Mech it spawns# Holograms turn off when Mech is in use, then reappear when a mech becomes available again# All have a time limit on use# Right click game effect icon to exit

They're in the midst of a final server merge in preparation for a final "sunset" event for the North American and European servers (separately, so as to be at reasonable playtime hours for each region).

We are currently planning to capture game data effective Monday, 2/23/09 starting at 12:01 AM CST for the planned server merge. The merge is planned to include the Pegasus, Orion, and Cassiopeia servers. The European server, Centarus, will not be included in the server merge, allowing us to host a separate 'sunset' event for that server that is more suited to European time zones.

Please note that due to the large amount of data processing and transfer involved, it may take up to 48 hours before the Hydra server is active after Monday's data capture. This means that character's will appear to "time warp" back to Monday at 12:01 AM on the new server. We do not recommend doing anything irreversible to your character after Monday's data capture, as we are not absolutely confirming the server merge at this time. We will release more details, as well as a final confirmation of the server merge, early next week.

Just seems a little weird to do a server merge so close to the game getting unplugged.